MOCK WEDDING

Shannon News, 23 July 1929, Page 4

MOCK WEDDING

COMPLAINT BY MINISTERS.

DEFENCE BY PROMOTER,

Mr W. H. Tomkins, secretary of the district hospital at Albury, New South Wales, recently expressed surprise at tho complaint by five members of the Albury Ministers’ Association against a mock Mardi Gras wedding held in the Dean Square, Albury, on June 3, at a carnival in aid of the hospital. Mock weddings, Mr Tomkins said, had been held by tho Church authorities themselves many 7 times. A mock wedding had been held in Albury by the churches in a Sunday school to raise money. He had taken part in a mock .wedding in a Church of England Sunday school.

When the churches used such methods to raise money for spiritual work, Mr Tomkins asked, why did they con- - demii them as a means of relieving physical suffering? He was deeply grieved that he had been associated with anything that had incurred the displeasure of the ministers. His committee, however, expected him to find £B,OOO a year to finance the hospital, but they expected him to do it only by approved methods. \lf it could be shown that during the mock wedding anything had been said or done that was sacrilegious or unchristian or tended to wreck homo life, as had been suggested, he would resign his posh tion.